


Put to Sleep My Mother's Curse

by lotesseflower (lotesse)



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Dark, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 02:29:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotesse/pseuds/lotesseflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mordred could bind Gaheris to him, capture his brother in cords of silk and steel and knotted rope, in bonds of loyalty and kinship and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put to Sleep My Mother's Curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Soujin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soujin/gifts).



Gaheris was the least imaginative , and the least clever, of all the Orkney clan; Mordred knew that well enough. It suited his purposes, and his own nature. Of his four half-brothers, Gaheris was of most use to him as a tool. Gawaine's passions could be useful, true, but they could not be counted on – and besides, the man was pathetically in love with Arthur, and for that Mordred hated him. Agravaine was too stupidly besotted with their mother to be good for anything.

Gareth was a fool who'd thrown his lot in completely with that of Camelot, abandoning his kin in favor of shining ideals and glittering stories. Mordred regretted the grim end he foresaw for Gareth, but he didn't see how it could be helped. The boy had made his own choices, explicitly going against the will of their mother to do so. He'd become one of them, always hanging about with Arthur's cuckolding champion. And while Mordred had no particular desire to see his brother cut down, he was unwilling to deny the fulfillment of his revenge simply because Gareth was such a chivalrous little nitwit.

But Gaheris – Gaheris understood family, and long anger, and the need to take sides. Gaheris remembered the childhood stories of the lovely Cornwall sisters' destruction at the hands of the Pendragon kings, and he perceived the danger that Camelot yet represented to the supremacy of the Orkney faction. He was not overly quick-witted, but Mordred was confident that his own quicksilver mind could more than make up for his brother's deficiencies in that area. Gaheris was, above all else, catchable. Mordred could bind Gaheris to him, capture his brother in cords of silk and steel and knotted rope, in bonds of loyalty and kinship and love.

And so he whispered to Gaheris in the dark, bending over his bare body, kissing him between insinuations and confessions and the pounding heat of sexual intercourse. Mordred told Gaheris things that he doesn't mean to, on those nights when they lay together: about the deep pain he'd experienced when he'd learned what his father was, and what his father had done, about the sick bitterness he felt watching them all parade about in their precious castle, hypocrites and traitors all. That he wished their mother could sometimes see him as a boy and not as a weapon. That he knew it was Arthur's fault that she could not, for who if not he could be to blame for Mordred's immoral existence, he who had lain with his own sister and got her with child?

Gaheris said very little in response to these lightless revelations, perhaps understanding that Mordred could take no comfort in any speakable word while his wrongs remained thus unspeakable in nature: incest, the attempted murder of an infant child, a deep desire for parricide. But he held Mordred close in the night, pressing the weight and strength of his larger body against Mordred's whip-thin tension; and Mordred felt comforted by the heavy reality of that embrace, letting Gaheris' presence calm the hysteria that tangled up his throat when he thought over-much about his own terrible identity.

He'd cling to his older brother's broad back, close his eyes and let himself be lost in the simple sensation of Gaheris' hands on his thighs, his buttocks, on his cock, stroking him to a blinding peak of sexual pleasure. Years ago, when he was just a slip of a boy, half-wild with being pent up at his mother's side, Gaheris had been the one to first show him this act of passion. And still Mordred thought of his half-brother's touch as basic, foundational, a thing that needed no explanation or thought. Gaheris might be unimaginative, but for that very reason he was safe, the unchanging rock at the center of Mordred's storms of wind and rain.

Gaheris did not kiss Mordred, except on very rare occasions, preferring to use his blunt, callused hands to arouse and to satisfy. Mordred, on the other hand, liked best to use his tongue, which he thought must have become so agile through long years of talking far too much, and to complex and twisting purposes. Mordred took great pride in his ability to reduce his powerful older brother to gasping delirium with only softly-spoken words, but sooner or later in their twining Gaheris would envelop him bodily, driving them both to satiation and then on into quiet.

Mordred knew that Gaheris loved him; indeed, he'd often told him so, and words of affection were ever ready to fall from his lips. He used small, familiar endearments that were almost a code, impenetrable to anyone outside the two of them. Mordred did not know if he loved Gaheris in return. Certainly, their comforting coupling was the most uncomplicated of all the relationships in his life, and he felt a strong sense of gratitude for that. He felt a passion for Gaheris, craving his brother's firm touch, yearning for the feeling he had in their lovemaking that he was cared for and contained and controlled. He needed Gaheris, both for that physical release, and because even he had to speak freely once and a while. If it were not for Gaheris, Mordred believed that he would have run mad years ago, and lost his will and focus as poor lustful Agravaine had done.

But Mordred was not at all sure that these feelings of gratitude and need were equivalent to love. Love, he suspected, would impel him to keep his beloved one safe, and such had never been his intent with regard to Gaheris. It was good that Gaheris loved him, because he liked the feeling of being loved, but mainly because that love made Gaheris indentured to him; he knew that his brother, out of the force of his love, would do as he was told. And Mordred placed no one before his vengeance.

If Gaheris were to die in the act of slaying Arthur, Mordred reflected as he lay cocooned in his sleeping brother's arms, I should not mind it so much. I would miss him, but I would feel at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Yuletide Madness. My characterizations are based pretty heavily on T.H. White's _The Once and Future King_, because it was my first King Arthur book when I was little, and has remained my best-beloved.


End file.
